Belgrade – Head of the Serbian parliamentary committee on Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun has warned that over the past 20 years a strong basis of jihadists has been formed in these parts, especially in Kosovo, which has acquired a regional character but that there is still no adequate response from the international community nor the region.“There is still no strong joint regional action or action of the entire international community to prevent it,” Drecun told reporters at the Serbian parliament.
The basis is particularly strong in Kosovo and Metohija, where radical Islam is being preached in more than 100 mosques, as well as the jihadist ideology which claims that Christians are the Muslims’ natural enemies, Drecun said.
Many children in Kosovo and Metohija grow up surrounded by such radical ideology and fall prey to jihadists, said Drecun.
“Over the past 20 years these parts have seen the creation of a very strong basis of Islamic jihad that has the full potential for recruiting jihadists, which has been proved in the example of Syria and Iraq,” Drecun said.
Commenting on the statement by the Interior Minister of the self-proclaimed Kosovo, Bajram Rexhepi, that the Islamic State graffiti on Decani monastery were sprayed by children, Drecun said that Rexhepi wished to diminish and play down the severity of the incident, even though the matter is too serious.
The Islamic State messages on the monastery are not harmless at all and they show the presence of a network of radical Islam that is extremely strong in the area of Decani and Pec and no one should accept the explanation that it was done by minors, said Drecun.
“It is even more dangerous if those messages were sprayed by children because that means that they live in an environment that preaches radical Islam and they can easily fall prey to radical Islamists,” he said.
It has lately been noticed that there are two channels through which radical Islamists are drafted for Syria and Iraq, said Drecun.
